Corporations get out ahead of federal mandates in keeping track of their emissions

Vinti Singh, Staff Writer

Published 7:34 pm, Sunday, December 26, 2010

General Electric set a goal in 2005 to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 1 percent in 2012. Five years later, it set a loftier goal: reduce emissions 25 percent by 2015.

Government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will start coming into effect in the new year, but GE and other Connecticut corporations are not waiting for mandates before changing their company policies.

"We believe cutting our carbon is important for the future of our company if we want to stay competitive," ESPN Senior Director of Sustainability Gerry Arrotti said.

Bristol-based ESPN tracks and reports its emissions to its parent company, Disney. The emissions reports include emissions from boiler systems, its fleet of vehicles, and how many refrigerants the company is consuming. ESPN also reports its waste diversion rates and has begun reporting its water consumption rates as well.

After tracking where most of its carbon emissions were coming from, ESPN began making cuts in those areas, Arrotti said. Some solutions were as simple as switching out inefficient light bulbs with better ones. ESPN also put motion detectors in its huge warehouses, so only the portions that were being occupied would be lit. The company also plans to put solar panels on its new childcare center. Each change has major benefits. Just eliminating paper coffee cups and giving all employees reusable mugs instead saved ESPN $6,000 in operating costs.

Pitney Bowes began reporting its emissions to the survey in 2008. The index will "give investors exposure to companies better positioned in the transition to a low-carbon economy," according to a PriceWaterHouseCooper company report.

"These trends suggest that having credible, transparent data about your carbon footprint will benefit all organizations in the future, no matter how much they emit," said Denise Sheehan, executive director of The Climate Registry, a nonprofit based in Los Angeles that sets standards on how to calculate and publicly report greenhouse gas emissions.

PriceWaterHouseCooper is not the only one looking at carbon as a tool to gauge a company's performance. NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc., has the Global Sustainability index 50 and Standard & Poor's has the U.S. Carbon Efficient Index.

Meanwhile, those companies that anticipate a federal cap-and-trade program for carbon emissions are deciding to invest in speculative carbon credits while prices are still low, according to a report released by the Ecosystem Marketplace and Bloomberg New Energy Finance in June.

Ultimately, all these initiatives are a head start, as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in January started requiring some companies emitting more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gasses a year to report their emissions. Early this year, the federal Securities and Exchange Commission released guidelines for corporations on how to disclose environmental impacts.

The SEC guidelines are a helpful prod to what far-sighted companies should be doing, and in some cases, are already doing, said John Echeverria, a professor at Vermont Law School, who specializes in environmental law.

While larger corporations are leading the way, smaller Connecticut companies will soon follow suit.

It takes three to five years for a corporation to develop a solid sustainable energy plan, said Arthur St. Armand, an environmental consultant based in New Canaan. For a smaller company, developing a plan should take about a year, he said.

"Implementing something new is hard," said St. Armand. "You always have one or two people that don't get on board. And then you put together a green team, but then as you're developing these plans, laws and regulations change so you have to redirect the company. And then you have to look outside your company to all the people you work with, and let's say there's a supplier supplying you with a widget that's bad for the environment. Then you'll have to change suppliers. You have to manage all those different components."

St. Armand teaches a class at the New Canaan Nature Center on sustainability compliance. The course is intended to add a green certification element to those seeking management degrees.

At the end of the course, the students have to create a sustainability plan for a company.

Once the plan is implemented, the students will receive certification from the Green Business League, a third-party organization, based in Plainfield, Ill.

St. Armand has about eight students in the class.One of his students is Jim Sweeney, the managing member of Durham- based Hometronics Lifestyles, which installs custom electronic systems.

Sweeney also plans to capitalize on the carbon reporting business by selling energy monitoring systems.

These systems will give companies a live report on how much energy is being consumed and also how much energy alternative sources, such as solar panels, are producing.

Sweeney plans to target the Connecticut hospitality industry with a system he says will reduce energy consumption by 33 percent. He expects hotel owners to recoup the costs of installing the systems within two years.

The system, already common in Europe, requires hotel guests to put their key card in a slot when they enter their rooms. The key card activates the lights and fans, and switches on the thermostat. When a guest takes the key out to leave the room, all of the systems shut off.

"The hospitality industry has a great need for these products because it seems when Americans travel across the country, they're not concerned about spending someone else's money," Sweeney said.